I LOVE YOU.
It was two years later. Captain Fordyce and his wife were in London,
walking leisurely in the vicinity of Buckingham Palace.
There was a drawing-room going on, and they gazed curiously at the long
line of carriages drawn up outside the palace; and not only at them,
but oftentimes into them.
The carriage occupants took their scrutiny as a matter of course.
“’Steban,” said his wife, trying to draw him away from what she feared
was a too noticeably disapproving survey of the thin shoulders of an
emaciated dowager, “what can be going on in this carriage? There is
quite a crowd about it.”
Looking over the heads of some small urchins in the gutter, they
saw two very pretty girls, who were disposing of sandwiches in an
exceedingly well-bred manner.
“Slaves to fashion!” remarked Captain Fordyce. “How would you like to
be in there, Nina?”
“To sit in a stiff dress and hold a bouquet is not my idea of
happiness,” she said, smilingly; “yet if I were as lovely as those
girls--”
“They have not a tithe of your good looks,” he said, with a genuine
masculine depreciation of the thing that did not belong to him. Then,
turning his back on the fascinating demoiselles, he stifled a yawn,
and, consulting his watch, asked whether she did not wish to go back to
their hotel.
“Yes, if you like,” she said, amiably, pausing to cast a glance into
a near-by carriage. Within it, seated beside an officer in a military
uniform, was a lady magnificent in ostrich plumes and a gleaming white
satin, the train of which was heaped up in billowy white waves on the
seat in front of her.
Nina uttered a delighted shriek, and the next instant her head
disappeared through the open carriage window, and she was embracing her
old friend, Lena Marsden.
“You little barbarian!” exclaimed the latter, kissing her
affectionately, and then pushing her back in order to look at her face.
“Where have you been these ages past? I have not had a line from you
for six months.”
“Ask my copper-hearted captain,” she said, as her husband, in utter
mystification, stepped up behind her; “he has the cruelty to drag me
all about the world with him.”
“Don’t believe her, Mrs. Eversleigh,” said Captain Fordyce, lifting his
hat and shaking hands with her; “she made me give up the _Merrimac_
because on a steamer it is not always practicable for a man to have his
family with him.”
“And you have left that fine old ship,” said Captain Eversleigh, “where
we--” An eloquent glance at his wife completed the sentence.
Captain Fordyce smiled. “Yes, but I have now one of the finest sailing
ships afloat,--the _Nina_.”
“And where are you?” inquired Mrs. Eversleigh.
“At Southampton,” replied Nina; “we are just from Japan.”
Mrs. Eversleigh critically surveyed her: a sedate and quiet happiness
enveloped the girl; she also looked older and slightly matronly. Yet
she had not lost the mischievous gleam from her eye. The old merry,
vivacious spirit was visible, subdued but still intact. “You appear
foreign,” said Mrs. Eversleigh, at last.
“I ought to,” observed Nina. “I bought this dress in South America last
winter, my hat is from the South Sea Islands, my jacket from Japan, and
so on.”
“And do you always go with your husband?” Nina’s eyes went to him, and,
seeing that he was deep in conversation with Captain Eversleigh, she
said, earnestly: “Always,--I should be utterly miserable away from him,
and he would be utterly miserable away from the sea. So we manage to
keep together. He has everything so comfortable for me. I have a little
cabin boudoir, the dearest nest of a place, with curtains of blue satin
and a carpet that one’s feet sink into, and busts of all my favourite
authors, and a cast of the Milo Venus behind--not a red drapery like
the one in the Louvre, but a blue velvet one to match the room, and--”
“Why, I must come and see all this,” said Mrs. Eversleigh, in an
interested way.
“Do come,” said Captain Fordyce, turning to her; “we are only
seventy-five miles from London, you know. You can take a run down some
morning, and return in the evening if you wish.”
“Yes, let us go,” said Captain Eversleigh, glancing at his wife’s pale
face, “a breath of the salt air will do you good,” and he proceeded to
make arrangements with Captain Fordyce.
“And where are you going next?” said Mrs. Eversleigh to Nina.
“To Spain for a cargo of wine and fruit.”
“Don’t you get tired of these long voyages? What do you do to amuse
yourself?”
“She runs up and down the ship with her baby on her back,” said Captain
Fordyce, turning around.
Nina was disturbed. This was an undignified thing to tell the very
grand lady before them. “I only do that occasionally,” she said,
stiffly; and, darting a rebuking glance at him, “I have a great many
other occupations. I read, and sew, and paint, and practise several
hours a day. I have a piano and an organ, too.” The old-time child-like
naïveté was delightfully revealed in her manner and speech at this
moment.
“And she shoots at things hung up in the rigging,” went on her husband,
who seemed bent on teasing her, “and talks nonsense to me, and writes
letters to the dear five hundred friends she makes in every port we
touch.”
Nina’s displeasure had passed away. “And sometimes there are useful
things to do,” she said, seriously. “Sometimes sailors get ill,--do you
know anything about life on sailing ships, dear Lena Eversleigh?”
“Nothing, whatever.”
Nina shuddered. “There is a great deal of cruelty in the world.
’Steban tells me of it, and we help a little. I assure you I am quite a
changed character from former days.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Eversleigh, with polite incredulity. She was
inwardly wondering how her young friend had been able to retain so much
of girlish freshness, sweetness, and caprice.
“I am far more serious,” continued Nina, soberly, still bent on
revealing the depths which time actually had added to her nature; “you
would like me far better now. I don’t see how you could have stood me
two years ago.”
“You were slightly impossible,” said Mrs. Eversleigh, suppressing her
amusement.
“I used to dislike English people, and I just loved to talk nonsense;
and I didn’t mean all I said; and though I knew more than people
thought I knew, I had no conception of the realities of life, and--”
“In short, you were quite a depraved character,” remarked her old
friend.
Nina stopped short. They were all laughing at her, and she
good-naturedly joined in their amusement.
“Your life sounds a pleasant one,” said Mrs. Eversleigh, after a time,
and with a faint sigh. “You don’t have that monster fashionable life
always biting and worrying at your heels, and urging you into all kinds
of excesses.”
“Stay with us for awhile, Mrs. Eversleigh,” said Captain Fordyce; “and
perhaps we will get you out of all this. I want a first mate for my
ship. Your husband is a man of many parts, I think we should work well
together.”
“And I should have you to talk to,” exclaimed Nina. “How charming that
would be! Don’t you want to be a sailor, Captain Eversleigh?”
He glanced at his handsome uniform, laughed heartily, then said: “What
are you two people looking forward to? Are you going to sail the wide
ocean all the days of your lives?”
“My wife’s plan,” said Captain Fordyce, “is for us to forsake the sea
in about ten or fifteen years, and settle down on shore, and devote
ourselves to the education of our child, but one is certain of nothing
in this life.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Eversleigh to Nina, “if you do take up your
habitation upon land, let it be near us--and now tell me something
about the child. What is he like?”
“He is the most perfect thing you ever saw,” cried Nina, rapturously,
“a little, dark-haired boy with an exquisite head, and the sweetest
hands and feet, and the disposition of a seraph.”
“And only the other morning,” said her husband, with qualifying
calmness, “I saw him with a handful of your brown hair in his hand.”
“Don’t believe him, Mrs. Eversleigh,” said Nina, anxiously. “Come and
see for yourself.”
“And now we must go,” said Captain Fordyce, resolutely, “or we shall
miss our train. We have been in London for three days, and I am anxious
to get back to the ship.”
“Good-bye, good-bye,” said Nina, reluctantly, “don’t forget next week,”
and she followed him slowly across the street. In the middle of an
extremely muddy crossing she stopped to look back. There was a stir
along the line of carriages, the Eversleigh’s coachman touched the
chestnuts with his whip, they started, went a few steps, then stopped
again.
“They may be there for an hour yet,” said Captain Fordyce, looking over
his shoulder, “how would you like to be with them, little wife?”
Despite her certain knowledge that this was barefaced angling for a
compliment, she could not keep the softly spoken words from her lips,
“I had rather be with you.”
He looked at her from his station on the curbstone,--well-pleased; for
nothing flatters a man so much as the happiness of his wife; he is
always proud of himself as the source of it.
Then giving her a hand to help her beside him, he murmured, “Will you
not repeat to me those three little words that you say so often and so
prettily?”
She lifted her glowing face, and, as he bent over her, she whispered
against his brown cheek, “I love you!”
THE END.
L. C. Page and Company’s
Announcement of
List of New Fiction.
Philip Winwood. (60th thousand.) A SKETCH OF THE DOMESTIC
HISTORY OF AN AMERICAN CAPTAIN IN THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE,
EMBRACING EVENTS THAT OCCURRED BETWEEN AND DURING THE YEARS 1763
AND 1785 IN NEW YORK AND LONDON. WRITTEN BY HIS ENEMY IN WAR,
HERBERT RUSSELL, LIEUTENANT IN THE LOYALIST FORCES. Presented
anew by ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS, author of “A Gentleman
Player,” “An Enemy to the King,” etc.
With six full-page illustrations by E. W. D. Hamilton.
Library 12mo, cloth decorative, 400 pages $1.50
“One of the most stirring and remarkable romances that has been
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are as interesting and agreeable as they are vivid and dramatic....
The print, illustrations, binding, etc., are worthy of the tale, and
the author and his publishers are to be congratulated on a literary
work of fiction which is as wholesome as it is winsome, as fresh and
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paragraph.”--_Boston Times._
Breaking the Shackles. By FRANK BARRETT.
Author of “A Set of Rogues.”
Library 12mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 350 pages $1.50
“The story opens well, and maintains its excellence throughout.... The
author’s triumph is the greater in the unquestionable interest and
novelty which he achieves. The pictures of prison life are most vivid,
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Library 12mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 350 pages $1.50
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic spelling that may have been in use at the time of publication
has been retained.